Let’s take a minute to talk about taste…everyone has taste in something. Sometimes you question it and say someone has “bad taste”…be it in clothes or films or food or music…but it’s human, we’re all different, if we all liked the same things, we’d be boring or, I’d imagine it’s what it’s like living in North Korea…I digress, anyway, you’ll never find me wearing tracksuit bottoms for example or, you won’t find me watching romantic comedies, or, you won’t find me ever enjoying R’n’B…it’s not in my taste! I hate them! But that’s OK! However, when someone comes along and shares the same interests and tastes as you, you become one of The Inbetweeners…”Ooh Friend!”… This happened very recently with regards to a band from Warsaw, Poland, who emailed me their new EP; “Eternal Hunger”…the band, who formed in 2014, is called THE POISONED HEARTS and they are the culmination of all things I love in music. Their name is derived from THE RAMONES track “Poison Heart”…and their influences include SISTERS OF MERCY…JOY DIVISION…THE CURE…all of the original alt. bands that paved the way for goth rock as we know it…misery loves company as they say, so let’s check it out! Ooh friend!
We open up with “The Ancient One” and we’re greeted with a very soft, delicate guitar tone with some ever so slightly darker underlying bass-driven synths…it’s incredibly simplistic and carries a really good, catchy hook, harking back to those early days of new wave alternative pop, vocally, Lukasz Boldyn delivers a brilliant performance channeling the likes of Andrew Eldritch and Jyrki Linnankivi…it captures the tone of the era and the humble beginnings of the genre perfectly, this is both nostalgic and refreshing, a good start. Following on from here we have the first of two covers and oh boy have they picked a classic…everyone knows the emotional story of Ian Curtis, one of rock ‘n’ rolls saddest chapters, immortalised in the posthumous Joy Division hit “Love Will Tear Us Apart”…here they’ve taken the iconic song and stripped it back, making it a little darker, a little grittier but it’s lost none of its melancholic charm…as soon as you hear that riff, you can’t help but feel happy and sad at the same time and they’ve done it justice here, beautiful.
The second cover is “Alice” by goth-rock godfathers Sisters Of Mercy…it’s not one of their bigger hits but here the band have perfectly paid homage to the retro charm of those early forays into alt. rock, the production quality is incredibly precise; it’s so nostalgic, it feels like you actually have been transported to the 80’s, and here Lukasz voice is perfect, absolutely spot on for this, it’s brilliant. The remaining two original tracks “When The Dawn Is Coming” and “Deadline”, despite being good themselves are always going to live in the shadows of the aforementioned…the former carrying a lighter, positive tone, having a soothing feeling, whereas the latter, with its slower, more morose delivery is probably the weakest track on the EP. However, overall, there’s nothing here you can really complain about…if you’re a fan of old-school alternative rock and have missed the youthful post-punk heyday’s of your upbringing, TPH will provide you with a quality blast from the past, for this truly sounds like the real deal…go on…get your goth on. [8]
We open up with “The Ancient One” and we’re greeted with a very soft, delicate guitar tone with some ever so slightly darker underlying bass-driven synths…it’s incredibly simplistic and carries a really good, catchy hook, harking back to those early days of new wave alternative pop, vocally, Lukasz Boldyn delivers a brilliant performance channeling the likes of Andrew Eldritch and Jyrki Linnankivi…it captures the tone of the era and the humble beginnings of the genre perfectly, this is both nostalgic and refreshing, a good start. Following on from here we have the first of two covers and oh boy have they picked a classic…everyone knows the emotional story of Ian Curtis, one of rock ‘n’ rolls saddest chapters, immortalised in the posthumous Joy Division hit “Love Will Tear Us Apart”…here they’ve taken the iconic song and stripped it back, making it a little darker, a little grittier but it’s lost none of its melancholic charm…as soon as you hear that riff, you can’t help but feel happy and sad at the same time and they’ve done it justice here, beautiful.
The second cover is “Alice” by goth-rock godfathers Sisters Of Mercy…it’s not one of their bigger hits but here the band have perfectly paid homage to the retro charm of those early forays into alt. rock, the production quality is incredibly precise; it’s so nostalgic, it feels like you actually have been transported to the 80’s, and here Lukasz voice is perfect, absolutely spot on for this, it’s brilliant. The remaining two original tracks “When The Dawn Is Coming” and “Deadline”, despite being good themselves are always going to live in the shadows of the aforementioned…the former carrying a lighter, positive tone, having a soothing feeling, whereas the latter, with its slower, more morose delivery is probably the weakest track on the EP. However, overall, there’s nothing here you can really complain about…if you’re a fan of old-school alternative rock and have missed the youthful post-punk heyday’s of your upbringing, TPH will provide you with a quality blast from the past, for this truly sounds like the real deal…go on…get your goth on. [8]
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